This invention relates generally to a railway ballast cleaning apparatus, and more particularly to such an apparatus which includes a rotatable cleaning drum for separating spoils particles from dirty ballast by a tumbling action into and out of a cleaning liquid. Also, a clean ballast discharge assembly for controlling side-to-side discharge of clean ballast is provided.
Railway ballast cleaning devices have in the past been designed as including either a shaker screen for sifting the spoils particles from the dirty ballast, or a rotary sieve or screen which, upon rotation, sifts the dirty ballast through the sieve orifices which then fall upon a conveyor belt for conveying the spoils to one side of the road bed. However, these prior art devices are known to generate a tremendous amount of dust and polluted air surroundings as the apparatus moves along the track. Besides, these devices are somewhat inefficient in that the spoils particles cannot be satisfactorily removed from the dirty ballast during the shaker screen or rotary sieve operations. Moreover, the discharge hopper assemblies of the prior art, which are made part of the ballast cleaning apparatus, are incapable of accurately controlling the discharge of clean ballast to one or both sides of the track under various conditions of a ballast cleaning operation.